


Fall From Grace

by Damibutt



Category: Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU
Genre: Character Death, Depressive, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 16:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damibutt/pseuds/Damibutt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows soldiers of justice never live long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall From Grace

Those who walked his path know that they are more likely to end up dying young than living to see the beginning of old age. It came with the package-- the boots, the cape, the kevlar, the  _mantle_. It came with the name and the responsibility of being a protector. 

Everyone knows soldiers of justice  _never_   _live_   _long_.

That’s why Damian had always told himself that he would prepare for his inevitable death long before the moment came. He had always been trained to be fearless, full of courage and determination. Death and pain are fears that are meaningless except for when they are used to determine caution in situations and when risks needed to be calculated for the most efficient choice of action.

But then he had found himself fighting someone he knows is a  _clone_ , someone  _meant_  to replace him because he was a symbol of  _failure_ to his mother. And try as he might, emotion is not always easy to push away to the recesses of his mind during battles. Seeing the Heretic and hearing manners of speech used that were originally  _his_  choice of speech as they fought sent raw unfiltered  _rage_  and  _grief_  through him. 

He was losing to a  _clone_. He was losing to a man-made  _genetically altered_  form of himself that was never meant to exist. He was  _losing_  a battle while his family fought against each other and Gotham tore itself apart before his eyes. Even the pain that came from his skin being ripped open while arrows pierced through his armor and bone was broken from brutal hits could not compare to the pain that came from realizing  _there is no hope_  because no one would budge and see rationality.

The rage and grief turns into terror when he takes a step back, head tilted up in order to meet the cold steel mask of the Heretic, and feels nothing but concrete behind him.  _Trapped_. There was no way out and no one to help him. He was alone and fighting a losing battle in a war that shouldn’t even  _exist_.

_“Mother, call him off at once.”_

The plea sounds nothing like his usual demands but death has the uncanny ability to make a person, no matter how young, remember that there are still far too many things left in the world that he has not yet explored. And the knowledge that every second is his last has horror coiling knots inside Damian’s body, making him tremble while blood dripped past open wounds and down to the floor. But even when the glint of a sword indicates what will be coming to him in the next moment, Damian  _hopes_. He hopes to survive, he hopes for an equal match.

He hopes to die a proper warrior’s death and not one whose death came by the hands of cowards. He prays and hopes as he quivers and grits his teeth while waiting for his execution, fists clenched tightly and eyes widened behind the opaque white lenses of his domino with the fear of a child about to be lose  _everything_.

When the steel finally pierces him, pushing past skin and muscle and bone to push out on the other side, Damian tells himself that he should have known better to hope because Gotham had never been kind to anyone who did such a pathetic, childish, naive thing like hope. 

So he will die here, with no words on his lips and no name to call for he had already called one and only silence has greeted him. He will die not like the hero, sacrificing himself for something greater--for lives outside of his own. He will die like trash, like a casualty with a title linking back to  _all_  the other casualties in this war. He will die not as a messenger or as a soldier--but as a message and nothing more.

When Damian’s blood grows in the puddle around him and cools and numbness steals him away to a world so dark and  _empty_ , he wonders about the irony of everything.

He had been raised as a prince, an heir of two strong houses and the grey line between two opposite worlds; he had been meant to bring two together into one. And he had been killed as if he was nothing but a pig, replaceable and whose existence was meaningless.  

A grey line that was not allowed to exist.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the many ways that I made myself sad.


End file.
